40 Fun Facts About Mississippi Blues Trail

Which rock and roll star first heard the blues as a boy in Tupelo, where a trail marker honors him?

Elvis Presley grew up beside Tupelo's Black neighborhoods, hearing blues and gospel stream out of churches and clubs. His first single covered bluesman Arthur Crudup's That's All Right.

Which blues legend, born in rural Berclair, is buried on the grounds of his own museum in Indianola?

B.B. King once worked in the brick cotton gin that is now part of the museum. He called Indianola his hometown and came back for homecoming shows every year from 1980.

Which bluesman's rumored deal with the devil made the Clarksdale crossroads marker a pilgrimage site?

Robert Johnson is the bluesman fans tie to the crossroads, though several Delta towns have been promoted as the spot. A 1999 state resolution proclaimed Clarksdale's intersection the official one.

Which road with its own Mississippi Blues Trail markers shares a name with a 1965 Bob Dylan album?

Highway 61 was the main road north out of Mississippi, running from New Orleans through the Delta to Memphis and beyond. It also crossed Bob Dylan's home state of Minnesota.

Which cornmeal snack, first sold by Delta street vendors, has a Mississippi Blues Trail marker in Rosedale?

Hot tamales likely reached the Delta with Mexican farm laborers and were quickly embraced by African Americans. Unlike steamed Mexican tamales, Delta ones are often simmered.

Which Memphis-born soul star's father preached his first trial sermon at a Delta church marked on the trail?

Aretha Franklin's father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, gave that sermon at St. Peter's Rock in 1931 and moved to Detroit in 1946. Her sisters Erma and Carolyn also became soul singers.

Which Marc Cohn hit immortalized the Hollywood Cafe, a Delta diner on the Mississippi Blues Trail?

Walking in Memphis grew from a 1985 night when Marc Cohn sang spirituals with cafe pianist Muriel Wilkins. The Hollywood's signature dish is fried dill pickles.

Which railroad engineer, killed in a 1900 train wreck at Vaughan, has a blues marker in Water Valley?

Casey Jones was credited with saving his passengers and crew, and bluesmen such as Furry Lewis sang his story. His nickname came from his hometown of Cayce, Kentucky.

Which future blues star did Alan Lomax first record in 1941 at a Stovall Plantation cabin near Clarksdale?

Muddy Waters spent most of his first thirty years in the cabin, which doubled as a juke joint for field hands. Lomax was collecting songs for the Library of Congress.

Which northern city, where more Black migrants came from Mississippi than any other state, has a trail marker?

Chicago was the Promised Land for thousands of Mississippians who rode Illinois Central trains north. Its Mississippi-born Black population more than quadrupled between 1910 and 1920.

Which Delta blues pioneer is honored by the trail's very first marker, at his Holly Ridge gravesite?

Charley Patton's marker went up on December 11, 2006, one of three dedicated that first day. Blues singers Asie Payton and Willie James Foster are buried in the same cemetery.

Which bandleader heard a man playing slide guitar with a knife at Tutwiler's train station around 1903?

W.C. Handy turned the sounds he heard in the Delta into popular orchestrations and became known as the Father of the Blues. The U.S. Senate used the Tutwiler date to declare 2003 the Year of the Blues.

Which Delta plantation with its own currency and post office carries the marker title Birthplace of the Blues?

Dockery Farms housed four hundred tenant families and ran like a self-sufficient town, with its own school, churches and railroad depot. The marker's title ends in a question mark, because the music's true origins are lost to time.

Which Southern prison, long run as a for-profit cotton plantation, inspired a blues by former inmate Bukka White?

Parchman Farm covered about 16,000 acres, and its isolation kept old work songs and field hollers alive. Folklorists from the Library of Congress came to record them from the 1930s.

Which Clarksdale attraction, started in 1979 by a library director, now fills a former railroad freight depot?

The Delta Blues Museum was the world's first museum devoted to blues, and at first it drew about one visitor a month. Founder Sid Graves took the exhibits home with him each night for security.

Which blues singer died after a 1937 car crash at the Clarksdale hospital that became the Riverside Hotel?

Bessie Smith died at the Clarksdale Colored Hospital, which reopened as the Riverside Hotel in 1944. Owner Mrs. Z.L. Hill ran it as a safe haven for touring Black musicians during segregation.

Which soul pioneer, born in Clarksdale in 1931, added a letter to his surname when he left gospel for pop?

Sam Cooke sang as a child in a family gospel group, the Singing Children, before starring with the Soul Stirrers. He added the final letter of his surname in 1957 to mark a new identity as a pop singer.

Which bluesman, born Chester Arthur Burnett near West Point, took a stage name from his grandfather's nickname?

Howlin' Wolf was named Chester Arthur after the U.S. president, and his grandfather called him Wolf. He ran away from home at 13 and hitched a train to the Delta.

Which rock and roll founder, born Ellas Bates near McComb, built a famous beat that bears his stage name?

Bo Diddley said his guitar style came from trying to imitate a bow on a violin, his first instrument. He rebuilt amplifiers and made a tremolo unit out of a clock spring and car parts.

Which Meridian-born country star and former railway brakeman is honored on the trail for his blue yodels?

Jimmie Rodgers recorded blues for more than a third of his output and is widely known as the father of country music. His 1927 record Blue Yodel sold over a million copies.

Which Scandinavian country hosts the Notodden festival that earned a Mississippi Blues Trail marker far from home?

Norway got its marker because the Notodden Blues Festival, founded in 1988, has hosted dozens of Mississippi artists. Notodden and Clarksdale became sister cities in 1996.

Which English port city, whose sailors brought home American records, has a Mississippi Blues Trail marker?

Liverpool took in American music through its transatlantic shipping and the nearby Burtonwood Air Base, where thousands of Americans were stationed. Those records revolutionized the sound of British bands.

Delta blues pioneers went north around 1930 to record for Paramount, a label run by a chair company in which state?

Wisconsin has markers because Paramount Records was founded there in 1917 by the Wisconsin Chair Company. Records were then sold in furniture stores to help sell phonograph cabinets.

Which New England state hosts the North Atlantic Blues Festival and has a Mississippi Blues Trail marker in Rockland?

Maine earned its marker through the North Atlantic Blues Festival, formed in 1994. Few blues performers toured the remote state until the 1970s, on the heels of the 1960s blues revival.

Guitarist Mel Brown's move to the city of Kitchener in 1989 earned which country a Mississippi Blues Trail marker?

Canada has a marker because Mel Brown made Kitchener, Ontario, a noted stop on the blues map until his death in 2009. He had earlier worked in Los Angeles with Johnny Otis and Etta James.

Which radio show, launched on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, in 1941, logged over 15,000 broadcasts by 2009?

King Biscuit Time advertised King Biscuit Flour in its lunchtime broadcasts, and its sponsor even launched a Sonny Boy brand of corn meal. The show inspired Helena's King Biscuit Blues Festival in 1986.

In which river city did the 1940 Rhythm Club fire, mourned in blues songs ever since, kill over 200 people?

Natchez lost more than 200 people, among them bandleader Walter Barnes and nine members of his orchestra. The blaze reportedly began when a match or cigarette lit the Spanish moss hung from the ceiling.

Which 1927 natural disaster hit a million acres of the Delta and inspired blues songs recalled on a trail marker?

A great flood followed when the levee broke at Mounds Landing on April 21, 1927. Within ten days, ten feet of water had covered a million acres and displaced thousands of people.

In Moorhead, what are the Southern and the Dog, whose crossing is named in a famous early blues line?

Two railroad lines met at Moorhead: the Southern Railway and the Yazoo Delta, nicknamed the Yellow Dog. The most common theory traces the nickname to yellow rolling stock marked Y.D.

Which juke joint near Merigold, opened around 1963 inside farmer Willie Seaberry's own home, drew tourists worldwide?

Po' Monkey's was also the home of its owner, who farmed by day and opened the club on certain nights. Photographer Annie Leibovitz was among those drawn by its dramatic decor.

Which Bentonia juke joint, opened by the Holmes family in 1948, was famed for buffalo fish and moonshine?

The Blue Front Cafe could not serve Coca-Cola under segregation, when Black customers were allowed only brands such as Nehi. At cotton harvest it might stay open 24 hours a day.

Which 1951 single, cut in Memphis by Ike Turner's band, is often cited as the first rock and roll record?

Rocket 88 owes its fuzzy guitar to an amplifier damaged on the drive to Memphis. Producer Sam Phillips said he stuffed the broken speaker cone with paper.

Which Jackson soul and blues label went national with Dorothy Moore's hit Misty Blue?

Malaco Records grew out of a booking agency whose co-founder had booked bands as a student at Ole Miss. Its studio was the first state-of-the-art recording facility in Mississippi.

Which amplifier and guitar maker, founded in Meridian in 1965, has its own Mississippi Blues Trail marker?

Peavey was founded by Meridian native Hartley Peavey and won worldwide renown for its amplifiers and sound systems. Its marker tells how amplification changed the blues after World War II.

In 1944 the Hopson Planting Company produced the first cotton crop planted, harvested and baled entirely by what?

Machines cut the need for field hands, one of the major factors behind the Great Migration to northern cities. Blues pianist Pinetop Perkins was a tractor driver at Hopson at the time.

Which instrument did Otha Turner, whose drum band is heard in Gangs of New York, play at Mississippi picnics?

Fife was Otha Turner's instrument, and he made his own by boring holes into bamboo cane with a heated metal rod. His band played for picnics and goat roasts on his north Mississippi farm.

Which fingerpicking guitarist farmed around Avalon for decades before the 1960s folk revival made him a star?

Mississippi John Hurt's first 78s, released in 1928 and 1929, are blues classics, but he only turned professional after leaving the state in 1963. His gentle style stood in stark contrast to the harsher Delta sound.

Which Delta blues icon, long retired in Rochester, New York, was relaunched by the 1960s blues revival?

Son House had moved to Rochester in 1943 and given up music. He was a preacher before he took up the blues in the late 1920s, and the pull between church and blues marked him for life.

Which label, launched from a Farish Street record shop in Jackson, issued Elmore James's first record?

Trumpet Records was started by furniture dealers Willard and Lillian McMurry, who found a stock of blues 78s in a hardware store they had bought. It was Mississippi's first label of national stature.

Which Delta town, named like a big Ohio city, opened the first Grammy Museum outside Los Angeles in 2016?

Cleveland was chosen as a testament to Mississippi's musical heritage in blues, country, gospel and rock. The original museum had opened in Los Angeles in 2008.